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New Day

Interview with Joe Lockhart and Ken Starr. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired March 08, 2019 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

BERMAN: On the left is Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. On the right, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, the men meeting for the very first time.

And they join us now on live television to talk about, oh, what happened 20 years ago, oh, what's happening today. But first, let me just start with that moment, Joe. I mean, did you ever think you would be --

(LAUGHTER)

-- face-to-face with Judge Starr; how did that feel?

JOE LOCKHART: I look forward to it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Okay, I read body language.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: (LAUGHS) And that was not the... the most comfortable exchange. Was there a time 20 years ago where you thought if you ever saw him you'd punch him in the nose?

LOCKHART: I never thought that. I thought I might yell at him. But I --

(LAUGHTER)

I doubt I'll do it this morning. I described it as... we came away from it as kind of a bad surprise party.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: That's awful.

BERMAN: Judge? Your take on it.

KEN STARR: Totally pleasant.

(LAUGHTER)

You know, I like people. So, Joe, very nice to meet you.

LOCKHART: Very nice to meet you.

STARR: And thanks for not punching me out.

LOCKHART: (LAUGHS) (INAUDIBLE)

BERMAN: You're a people person.

STARR: Yes.

BERMAN: That's what they say. So Judge Starr, let me ask about the news this morning. We watched yesterday, Judge T.S. Ellis, Federal Judge; you've been in that role before -- give a sentence that was far below the federal guidelines for the crimes that Paul Manafort was convicted of; 47 months in prison. Your reading of that sentence.

STARR: He was tempering justice with mercy. Here is a 67-year-old defendant who's obviously not in the best of health and Judge Ellis made a very interesting comment about federal prisons -- and I've been in a neglect, as a visitor of federal prisons. People die. Not through terrible things happening, but just, it's a very stressful place and so I think Judge Ellis, who's been on the bench for 30 years, understood that. And I think he also just said to Bob Mueller's prosecutors, this is really excessive. What you're seeking is really excessive. That's one judge's view.

BERMAN: There's two aspects of that. Number one, you say it's really tough, federal prison is. Well, it's equally tough for young black men who get convicted of crimes.

STARR: Absolutely.

BERMAN: That people don't think -- you know, or think, why are they being convicted of crimes and getting far bigger sentences than an aging white guy convicted of tax fraud, when that is a crime.

STARR: Each, ah... situation has to be analyzed by the judge, as opposed to, I'm going to do a lot of comparisons here. That's when you have a pre-sentencing report. The pre-sentencing report looks at the person's entire life. So you're right. Are there disparities? That's the reason we have sentencing guidelines, but it's also the reason that Congress has seen fit to give judges the ability, it's reviewable, so we'll see -- if the prosecutors decide, you know, we're going to appeal this downward departures. They have the authority to do that.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, the discrepancy, obviously between street crimes and white collar crimes this morning is getting a lot of attention and people, many people feel that the judge was too lenient, one of whom is Monica Lewinsky --

(CROSSTALK) -- who's pointing out the sentence that he got. She says, "Yep. I had been threatened with 27 years for filing a false affidavit and other actions, trying desperately to keep an affair private," do you see her point?

STARR: Of course, I see the point. No one should, in fact, have to face these horrible sentences and so but -- who provides the framework for the criminal's sentence? The Congress of the United States. I think we have over-criminalization of the laws and I think many of the sentences are much too harsh and there are too many people sitting in prison. Now that's one person's view.

But it's increasingly, as I think we're seeing politically, the view of the American people and the members of Congress saying, we need to recalibrate. We've gotten carried away with these very Draconian sentences.

CAMEROTA: But who was threatening her with 27 years for filing a false affidavit?

STARR: Oh, there may have been a conversation. I did not, but will save -- (FUMFERING) that's the first I've heard of that, to be honest.

BERMAN: Joe, when you look at all this, well, okay --

(CROSSTALK)

You're skeptical.

LOCKHART: I'm skeptical of that only because it's been reported widely -- it's in Monica Lewinsky's book. It's in a number of interviews. Her lawyer did... dozens of interviews where they talked about holding her in a hotel room and telling her that if she didn't tell the truth, she could spend 27 years in jail. So I'm skeptical.

STARR: Well, first of all, she was not held in a hotel room. She had the opportunity -- so if we want to re-litigate that, I'm happy to do that.

CAMEROTA: Well -- (INAUDIBLE)

(CROSSTALK)

LOCKHART: But no-no-no.

(CROSSTALK)

Let me... let me finish. Because he just made a very interesting comment. They held her in a hotel room. Absolutely false. That was exactly what she maintains and what her lawyer at the time maintained and guess what? A district judge, Norma Holloway Johnson, heard what they had to say and said, "She was not... she was not in custody. She was, in fact, free to leave."

(CROSSTALK) She was 21 years old. She had several older prosecutors sitting in a room threatening her with spending a considerable part of her life in jail. So she may not have been technically in custody, but in this case I believe her. She felt like she had no choice. She felt like -- and it was only when she called her mother and her mother came down and her mother talked to a lawyer, that she recognized the idea that she didn't need to be there and she should leave.

CAMEROTA: It was her impression that she was --

(CROSSTALK)

LOCKHART: It was certainly her impression.

STARR: With all due respect, utterly revisionist history. She played our prosecutors very effectively. She knew exactly what she was doing.

CAMEROTA: She was (INAUDIBLE) --

(CROSSTALK)

LOCKHART: That was certainly her impression.

STARR: With all due respect, utterly revisionist history. She played our prosecutors very effectively. She knew exactly what she was doing.

CAMEROTA: How could she have known exactly what she was doing? She was 21 years old and hadn't been in that situation before.

(CROSSTALK)

STARR: She was extremely smart and extremely sophisticated. She kept the prosecutors waiting. Let me wait -- (CLEARS THROAT) Let me get my mother down here. And her mother encouraged her to, in fact, cooperate with the investigation. But what she made clear to her mother -- and Joe knows this -- she was not going to do anything to hurt the President of the United States.

LOCKHART: Well, let me just add one other thing, which is they were prosecutors that worked in Judge Starr's office who were extremely uncomfortable with the process. They went on the record afterwards on how uncomfortable they were. And when I look at this and I balance up the statements, I'm going to side with them.

STARR: Well, the final thing I would say on this is, let's look at the entire record of what happened. She was at the Ritz-Carlton. She walked around -- including on her own. She got a Starbuck's. She was able to call the President of the United States but didn't get through. She was trying to warn the president that this -- guess what? You're about to commit perjury; you shouldn't do it. I've committed perjury. Others were being encouraged to commit perjury. This is serious stuff.

So, look. She was a very able, smart person who I think handled herself extremely well, unfortunately for the country. That is -- she put us off for six months.

LOCKHART: Listen, it's... it just doesn't add up. If... if she didn't feel like she was under a threat of going to prison, and if she didn't feel like she was being held there against her will, because she didn't know her rights -- why did she have to... why didn't she -- in the hotel room, pick up the phone and call the President of the United States? There's a reason she left that hotel room, because she said --

(CROSSTALK)

-- felt her life was under threat and that's why several of the prosecutors working in that office were extremely uncomfortable. That they thought it was over the line and unethical.

(CROSSTALK)

STARR: Well, I just totally disagree. And there's been one prosecutor who's made some statements about (CLEARS THROAT) his own discomfort, but not that anything was over the line. Look. Prosecution, we've seen this with the Mueller team -- prosecutors, in fact, use the tools in the tool chest to say, here's what you are facing and you need to be aware -- and now it's time for you to make a decision. So are you going to cooperate with the investigation? Because you have committed a serious crime.

And Joe doesn't want to talk about that. She had committed perjury and she knew she had committed perjury and she was encouraging others. Now all of the sudden, when we see people committing perjury in the Mueller Investigation, we are outraged. Rightly so. But let's now look back at exactly what happened.

What happened was, the president has a... hold on -- and he is told that the American people will forgive adultery, but they will not forgive perjury. He was found in Contempt of Court because of not of perjury, but Obstruction of Justice. We think Obstruction of Justice is pretty darned important.

So let's look at the bottom line facts of what happened in that investigation with 14 criminal convictions and Monica -- and I wish her well; I hope she does well.

BERMAN: You want to... (INAUDIBLE) any more comments on this before we --

LOCKHART: No, let's move on.

BERMAN: I do think it's interesting, though. I do think it's interesting here that it didn't take much to get this discussion to go back 20 years --

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Well, it seems very relevant, somehow, today.

(CROSSTALK) And all these same things are in play.

BERMAN: And... it does beg the question -- this is... at its face, it was about perjury, but it was about a relationship between a man and a woman and there was all this, there's all this passion about it. Axios has a story out in the last 24 hours, which says look at what's happening with Russia. Look at what's happening with the Mueller Investigation. They're calling it the biggest political scandal in American history.

Is there an issue with proportionality here, Joe? Between what's happening now and what happened 20 years ago?

BERMAN: Well, I think Axios makes a great point, because this was, when it came down to it, a question about a personal relationship, however inappropriate, and whether the president was truthful and whether he obstructed justice. The Senate made their decision and you know, the country moved on from there.

The Axios story, though, points out how much deeper and how much more dangerous and how unprecedented, what's going on with President Trump. Because it involves a foreign nation trying to influence our election. It involves the president's financial misdeeds. Paying hush money to a porn star. It involves so much -- it involves the National Security Advisor getting fired for contacts with the Russians. It involves the president, while in office, writing checks on this hush money. It involves the president potentially putting our national security at risk -- (INAUDIBLE) while in office writing checks on this hush money. It involves the president potentially putting our national security at risk, because of some dealings with the Russians that we have yet to fully understand.

So from a proportionality point of view, I think there is no comparison. And the thing that even 20 years on, that still probably bothers me the most is -- you have all of these things, you have counterintelligence, you have our national security at risk and Bob Mueller and his team have managed to do this the right way, which is to keep it redacted. (LAUGHS) And they'll reveal their cards when they want, you know.

And with Judge Starr and his team, I read about it every day in the paper. I read about secret Grand Jury testimony every day in the paper. I saw Judge Starr at the end of his driveway doing press conferences. This was an attempt to put political pressure on the president to get him to resign. It didn't work. He was eventually acquitted, but it looks to me, at the end of the day, that the Axios is right; that this is unprecedented. We've never seen anything like it. Even they look at the (FUMFERING) Teapot --

(CROSSTALK)

-- (LAUGHS) Dome Scandal as paling and comparing to this. And that was done right. I don't think the investigation of the president was done right.

(CROSSTALK) CAMEROTA: Judge Starr?

STARR: Well, the -- (CLEARS THROAT) the Axios piece is very intriguing and these are serious matters; they are being looked into. But the issue with Monica Lewinsky and the relationship came in a context, which is we believe the President of the United States had committed perjury -- during the course of the Whitewater Investigation. We couldn't prove it. Prosecutors will frequently say there's a difference between what we know and what we can prove.

His business partner in Hillary Rodham Clinton's client, as well as business partner, Jim McDougal, he's said this in his book -- that he, Bill Clinton, committed perjury in his trial. Now you might say, well, but wait a second. That was one failed land deal in Arkansas and so forth. There were other prosecutions; 14 criminal convictions and so (INAUDIBLE) -- now none of that came to the House. Thirty-one Democrats did say this is serious enough, what happened; you can dismiss it for all you want -- this is just where people can agree to disagree -- but the point is, 31 Democrats joined by saying, we cannot abide by a president who has committed perjury and obstruction of justice, especially before a Federal Grand Jury and especially when people in his own party were warning him.

So we've not had that yet, have we? We've had people around the president plead guilty to lying. You would say, that's really serious. I agree. Lying to a Grand Jury is really serious and that's what President Clinton did.

BERMAN: I guess we have a question about where lying to the American people about some of these issues fits in. We'll take that up, after a quick break. Much more with Joe Lockhart and Judge Starr, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: We are back with our spirited and slightly awkward conversation with Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary for President Clinton and Ken Starr, the man who led the independent counsel investigation of President Clinton and was previously solicitor general. So, Judge Starr I want to ask you what - just to respond to what Joe had said before the break, which is that he says that he woke up to news everyday about the investigation into President Clinton in The New York Times, press conferences from you. Robert Mueller has not breathed a word and in fact so much so that the American public may never know what his findings are if Bill Barr decides not to release it, what do you think of that?

STARR: Well I mean first off respond and then talk about the report. We had press outside out offices, we had press outside my home in McLean, Virginia every single day. And so I respectfully disagree with what Joe had - let me finish, with what Joe had to say that I hold press conferences. I did not hold press conferences outside my house the like, I did hold press conferences and I think that's appropriate, I'll defend that in terms of public information.

CAMEROTA: Well hold on. STARR: No, no, he made a very serious charge, he also talked about grand jury information, with all due respect Joe, we've been down this trail before, we litigated that, I won, the President's lawyers lost. And this was an elaborate investigation that said you have gone beyond releasing what I think is appropriate and important. Public information that's appropriate for the public to know and you've gone across the line. Joe said it again today and it's wrong. I have a judgment of Norma Holloway Johnson who then affirmed the fighting's of a special master saying, the charges that were leaking grand jury information are false. Now we move to the....

CAMEROTA: Well, my point is that there are reporters outside of Robert Mueller's office everyday but he's choosing not to talk. Do you think that that's a wise decision?

STARR: I don't think so, no. I just, I respectfully disagree. So, here we have the scene in the court yesterday where the prosecutors are being up rated, why are you seeking this and how are you responding to the defense by Paul Manafort that you've been spreading this information about this man and that is the worse case in a generation of spreading misinformation to count him, he's guilty of serious offenses, there's no question about it and deserves to be punished. But I just have a different perspective, Bob Mueller has a public relations officer, public information officer, I think it's important to provide public information that's appropriate.

BERMAN: All right, let me push this forward. There is - there are justice department guidelines that a sitting president can't be indicted, why does that matter? Well, there is a glitch in the system which is that Robert Mueller is going to provide a report to the attorney general, the attorney general then gets to decide what to do with it more or less. If justice department guidelines don't provide that president can be indicted, there are those who say that you can't even suggest that there are charges here that you could bring with the president. Do you think a sitting president can be indicted?

STARR: Yes, and I disagree with the justice departments guidelines but it is the historic position of the department, it goes back to the days of Bob Work and the Nixon administration when Judge Work made the determination that a sitting vice president, then Spiro Agnew, could be indicted but a sitting president can not. I think the case of Clinton vs. Jones arising out of the Poly Corbin Jones case where President Clinton made the legal claim that he was entitled to immunity from the civil lawsuit for sexual harassment during his presidency was rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court. I think that plus first principles, no person is above the law means that a president can be indicted but that's not the justice department policy and Bob Mueller as you know is an officer of the justice department and is therefore required to follow that policy. He can not indict, we can talk about the report if you want to.

CAMEROTA: There's the glitch.

LOCKHART: Well, there is a glitch and there's a couple of - the way this is set up now is not always is Bob Barr, Bill Barr I'm sorry, Bob Barr was our house manager, that's a slip. Not only does Bill Barr have the ability to keep this and suppress this, he also has the ability to send it to the White House so they can take a couple weeks figuring out what their response is. We saw Judge Starr's report as everyone else did, we had a pretty good idea because we read a lot about it in the newspaper what was in it and we had a pretty fulsome response ready. There is a problem with the independent counsel law and I think one of the things and one of the rare bipartisan moments in Washington was at the end of this investigation, Congress said this system doesn't work, this independent counsel exceeded what we thought they should do, that the system was out of control, they let the independent counsel laps, not only - all of sudden there was no provision and then they came up with this as a way to try and fix what they saw as the accesses of Judge Starr's investigation. The fix doesn't work though if this Catch 22 holed and none of this stuff ever comes out.

BERMAN: Judge, if American's get to see this report, how much do you want public?

STARR: Oh, I would love to know more rather than less. I'm a member of the public who would like to be informed, however that's not consistent with justice department practice and I need to respond to what was just said. There was a joint defense agreement and you full well know that the defense, the very able lawyers of President Clinton, not the White House counsel, knew exactly what was happening when witnesses come out of the grand jury room and their lawyers report to your lawyers. So, the idea that you're reading about all of this in the newspaper otherwise they're behind a vale of ignorance is just utterly false.

LOCKHART: Let me just - that is true and I also knew at the time what our lawyers knew and what we knew from other lawyers and there was information consistently that we were unaware of. And I also know this, that you can say - that a prosecutor can say I never talked to the press but he could talk to other lawyers in town who did talk to the press and it was a consistent, I found, consistent cases, I'll use one example of a former U.S. attorney Joe Digenova who was talking to the press and the reason I know it is because he got it wrong once. And a newspaper had to retract that story because he got it wrong and he was getting his information from his friends in the independent counsel's office, so yes, they took some steps to cover their tracks but still the underlying act was against what the justice system should be.

STARR: Well again I just respectfully disagree with everything Joe is once again litigating, which is again Joe this was examined it was looked at fully, I know you have your views, you're not going to change your views but I'll just say this, trust the justice system in this respect. The lawyers, the president's lawyers made serious allegations and they were unanimously rejected by the special master and by Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

LOCKHART: Well I would just finally say to that, that when you say trust the justice system I think Congress and the American public trusted the justice system, when this affair was over Congress changed the law because all they did was trust the system. STARR: Well I need to respond to that because what I think Joe you have failed to note is that during Iran Contra, similar kinds of allegations were being made against Judge Walsh and alike and the republicans no longer supported it, then after the Monica Lewinsky faze of the investigation then the democrats no longer supported it. So, this is very partisan throughout and one of the things that was wrong with the independent counsel law to being with was it took the appointment process out of the justice department and put it in the hands of judges. That was totally wrong, it also had this reporting requirement which really was a trigger requirement in terms of impeachment, send the impeachment referral to the Congress. That's one of the improvements of these regulations.

LOCKHART: Let me say I found something that I can agree with Judge Starr on. This was partisan three out, all the way through with everyone involved.

BERMAN: Can I ask -- so, Judge you brought up lying and I understand that lying to a grand jury and lying to investigators is against the law. Lying to the public and lying to the press isn't, I wish it weren't so but it is. How then do you treat public dishonesty which we have seen from the President? The approvable lies and some of them have to do with Stormy Daniels when he was on the airplane telling reporters that he didn't know anything about the payments, when in fact we've seen checks that have gone to Michael Cohen, now the checks don't say for Stormy Daniels but we've heard him on tapes talking about payments for things like the Stormy Daniels case and the southern district says that the President directed Michael Cohen to make these payments. How do we handle public dishonesty?

STARR: Right, public dishonesty is entirely political and that's when it goes to the House of Representatives to say is this an abuse of the President's power and lying to the American people is in fact something that the House of Representatives can appropriately say I think that the President is abusing his power. That was the way we viewed what President Clinton was doing.

BERMAN: You did, he said I did not have sex with that woman Monica Lewinsky, you looked at that as a lie to the American people which was an abuse of power.

STARR: It was part of a pattern of abuse of power and we laid that out in the referral. Congress considered that but I think what we're really out right now, is we're not about impeachment as far we know. We're really about the Iowa caucuses and the presidential election which is in the next calendar year, I think that's what's going on.

CAMEROTA: But do you see abuse of power from what you've seen now and obstruction of justice publically in what's played out?

STARR: I'm not in position to know because I don't know all of the facts...

CAMEROTA: Well I mean just from what you understand....

STARR: ...no, no, no, Alisyn don't come on, don't argue when I'm trying to say that I don't make judgments until I know all the facts and I think it's very important not to be rushing to judgment. I have said that lying to the American people for self interested reasons can in fact constitute an abuse of power, then it becomes you analyze the facts. I don't jump to conclusions about whether this set of facts constitutes abuse of power.

LOCKHART: I would ask just one the simple question of Stormy Daniels and the payment the President in front of the camera said I knew nothing about it. We know now from the southern district and of New York as individual one, he not only knew about it, he orchestrated it. That's an abuse of power, so I would assume using your logic that's an impeachable offense.

STARR: I would say that is something that you weigh in the balance. We said in the abuse of power point, the false invocation of executive privilege. The making up of a so called phantom privilege to protect secret service agent, encouraging others to lie, Betty Curry encouraging her to lie, it was an entire pattern of behavior that we thought the Congress should consider. It wasn't up the House to determine did this in fact constitute an abuse of power.

CAMEROTA: Right, and do you see that pattern now?

STARR: I don't know enough about the facts, say it's a pattern. You're talking about one episode, I view that as a serious matter when the President of the United States lies to the American people, it then becomes a political judgment. What do you think of it? But I'll just say at a political level it is very clear that the American people did not hire a Sunday school teacher, and I think people knew that when they went into vote, either for Hillary or for Donald Trump, they well knew that you had two individuals with very interesting backgrounds. And so the American people spoke and so now let's allow - here's the way I see it. We're really outside the province of law and we're now into the province of politics and presidential politics, I think that's what this is all about.

LOCKHART: You know, I think one of the political prosecutors in your office, is why I'm taken by that last comment about Sunday school. One of the criticisms was we were passing moral judgment on President Clinton and I believe that. And I think it's not revision is history to say well it's we didn't elect a Sunday school person and if there's a standard it should be an equal standard, it's not, it never had been. There's politics in here, democrats who've said one thing are in a different position now. Republicans have totally flipped and you know I think the public has a right to know and trust that the system of justice works for them and it isn't partisan. And I think as recently as last night we've had another example of a judge making a decision that leaves people scratching their heads.

STARR: Well this was not a moral judgment, what happened during the Clinton years where crimes were committed and if we want to in fact say that the president is not above the law, should, in fact, be held accountable, then the real question is, how do we go about it.

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